The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant

by Dan Savage

  “Yep.”

  She hit the ground hard, and smashed her head against a rock, ripping open her forehead.

  “It was a pretty deep cut,” she said. “But I was just glad my animals didn't get hurt.” Her friend was hurt too, and probably they both should've seen a doctor. “But we didn't have any money and we didn't have anyone to leave the animals with.”

  “Are you going to pay the fine?” Terry asked, steering the conversation back to Melissa's run-in with the law.

  “No. Anyway, in ninety days, I won't be pregnant anymore and I won't be in Portland anymore. I'm going up to Seattle, and then I'm heading to New York. It's not like they're going to come and get me.”

  Paying Melissa's fine occurred to me, but two things worked against the idea. First, birth-mother expenses were handled by the agency—we wrote a check to the agency for Melissa's rent; the agency wrote her landlord a check—to keep any money from changing hands between birth mothers and adoptive couples. Second, getting Melissa out of this jam could establish a very dangerous precedent. While we could afford to buy Melissa a steak when she wanted it, we probably couldn't afford to get her out of every jam the gutter-punk lifestyle can get a girl into.

  Instead of offering to pay her fine, I brought up my arrest record. At three different ACT-UP demonstrations in the early nineties, I was hauled away in handcuffs, once from the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Along with two hundred others, I was arrested, held for ten hours in a room with no food, water, or toilets, and ordered to appear in court two weeks later. Two days later, though, I was back at home, with no intention of returning to Washington, D.C., until I'd been elected to Congress.

  Melissa listened to my stories of being booked and sitting in holding cells. She nodded at me, and I could feel the beginnings of a bond. Terry liked the same music she did, and I'd been arrested. Melissa and I were fugitives, running from the law. Finally we shared something.

  With Melissa in the back of our rental car, Terry drove us up the winding road to OHSU. Why would anyone put a hospital on top of a hill? I wondered. How do ambulances make it up in time to save anyone's life? We turned off the main road and drove past an emergency room I hope I never have to get to in a hurry. OHSU is a collection of buildings from the twenties, fifties, and seventies clumped together over three or four acres; the place feels more like a college campus than a hospital complex.

  By the time we found the parking lot and made our way to the prenatal care clinic, we were late for Melissa's appointment. She signed in, and the three of us—two fags and a gutter punk—sat reading Parenting magazine while we waited for Melissa's name to be called. The first part of the appointment included a physical, and we weren't invited. When the nurse called her name, Melissa disappeared down the hall, leaving Terry and me alone in the waiting room.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “I'm fine.” Terry shrugged. “I thought I'd be upset, but I'm not. I'm okay.”

  I'd seen Terry get upset about his dad. His family learned the day before Thanksgiving that his father's second liver had failed and that the cancer had spread. He died five weeks later, two days after Christmas. A couple of years afterward, we were at my place getting ready to go to a friend's house on Thanksgiving when Terry walked into the bedroom and told me he missed his father. I didn't even look up.

  “Really,” I said, “hand me my shoe.”

  I didn't understand why he was bringing his father up; we were late for the party. He had told me his father died around the holidays, but he hadn't told me the dates, or if he had I wasn't paying attention. Anyway, we were late for dinner, I thought, what's with this dad stuff ? Terry sat on the bed and started to sob. I dropped my shoe, held Terry, and apologized for being the World's Worst Boyfriend. Having seen what Thanksgiving can do to Terry, I assumed that being back at OHSU would be hard on him. But he seemed fine, and when the nurse told us Melissa's physical would take about twenty minutes, I suggested we go get something to drink in the cafeteria. We walked through a skyramp into another building, made our way to the elevators, and went down to the cafeteria. I got tea, Terry got coffee, we paid, we sat down in the dining room.

  And it hit.

  The ward where Terry's father had died was in another building. But this cafeteria was where bad news was passed from mother to sons, as they sat staring at food they couldn't make themselves eat. Terry didn't break down; he just needed to get the hell out of there. We took our drinks and headed back for the elevators.

  “This is just so weird, being back here,” he said. “God, I hate Portland.”

  * * *

  When we returned to the prenatal care clinic, Melissa was looking for us. Her checkup had gone well. If we wanted to meet her hospital social worker, Melissa said, rolling her eyes, we'd need to go and sit in a counseling room with her and wait.

  The room was small, windowless, and stuffy, and the three of us waited in silence for the social worker to show up. Despite having access to a shower and laundry room, Melissa still smelled like a homeless person. So far as we could tell, she hadn't bathed since we met her, or washed her clothes. On the street or in restaurants we didn't notice, but in a tiny room or a car, we could tell Melissa didn't do soap. She didn't smell filthy—she didn't reek—but her scent was strong and, in enclosed spaces, not very pleasant. I could only imagine what the doctor who did her physical thought.

  The door opened and a less glamorous version of Laurie walked into the room, carrying a clipboard. Nancy was bright and cheerful, delighted to meet Terry and me, and she chirped “Hello” at Melissa, who faked a half-smile. She led us through a conversation about the birth; what Melissa needed to do when labor started, what floor she'd be on, how long Melissa could stay at the hospital after the birth. Nancy asked if she could make a note in Melissa's chart about a gay couple adopting her baby.

  “That way, no confusion or misunderstanding, 'kay?” Nancy said.

  “ 'Kay.”

  As long as she was making notes, Melissa asked Nancy to make a note about drugs. When she went into labor, Melissa wanted drugs and lots of them. She didn't want to be in pain at all during this birth, and she wanted the drugs to come early and often. Nancy explained that there were only certain times during labor when drugs could be administered; Melissa needed to come to the hospital as soon as she went into labor to ensure that she got all the drugs she had coming. She made a note in Melissa's chart about her concerns.

  Nancy asked us if there were any other issues, and I said yes. I explained to Nancy that we'd been playing it cool with our friends about Melissa picking us, in case she changed her mind about us or about adoption.

  “We realized that we've been playing it cool with Melissa too,” I said, “and we probably shouldn't. We want her to know that we're excited about being dads and we're happy she picked us,” I continued, looking at Nancy and talking about Melissa as if she weren't sitting in the room with us. “But we want to respect Melissa's right to change her mind, and keep the baby if that's what she wants to do. I think we maybe were worried that acting too excited would make Melissa feel like she had to give the baby up. I think not letting ourselves get carried away was a way to respect her rights.”

  Melissa and Terry were looking at me as if I were insane.

  “I mean, do you feel pressure not to change your mind?” I asked.

  “I don't feel any pressure,” Melissa said, shrugging. “If I change my mind, someone else will pick you.”

  She said it matter-of-factly, and she meant to be comforting, but Melissa really spooked us. After we dropped her off at Outside In, Terry and I talked about what had seemed a hypothetical—Melissa changing her mind—now seeming like a very real possibility. What if Melissa was the only birth mother on earth who would see our picture and think, “That's them”? There might not be another “Susan” out there, we worried, and if we went back into the pool, there might not be someone else that would pick us.

  Good News Will Come by Phone

 
I couldn't keep the news from my mother any longer; I was chokingon guilt. Telling Mom would invite some jinx-y energy into our lives, but not telling her was becoming more difficult. Whenever we talked on the phone, she asked if we'd heard anything from the agency. Before we went into the pool, I'd explained that the average wait was a year. Whenever she asked what was up, I reminded her that we'd only just jumped into the pool.

  “Well, I've got my fingers crossed. I'm rooting for you.”

  “It's not a race, Mom. And, anyway, no one gets picked in the first month. It's going to be a while.”

  “Well, I'll keep you guys in my thoughts.”

  That's code: when my mother says she'll keep us “in her thoughts” what she means is “in her prayers,” but she defers to my delicate atheistic sensibilities and doesn't mention prayer.

  By this point, of course, we had been picked. Most of our friends and coworkers knew about Melissa, and we'd told them that barring “BBD/BCM,” Terry and I would be dads in a few weeks. But our parents didn't have a clue. Since my mother and her husband live outside Chicago, and Terry's mom and stepdad live at the other end of Washington state, keeping the news from them was easier than keeping it from our friends and coworkers. We had to get time off work to go to Portland, and when friends were over we were constantly on the phone with the agency and generally acting like dorks. Our friends demanded answers. But our parents? All they knew was that lately we were a little harder to get hold of.

  Even if our parents had been in town we wouldn't have told them about Melissa right away. Our friends could keep calm, and they understood why we weren't letting ourselves get excited. We could say “BBD/BCM” to our friends. When we begged off the baby shower, Terry's coworkers understood. But our parents? By which I mean, But my mother? My mother treats every occasion—every trip to the corner store, every birthday, every holiday—like the invasion of Normandy. Every contingency must be planned for, every worst possible outcome must be imagined and prepared for, and everything and anything that might be needed must be packed in.

  For example, when I was suddenly making grown-up money for the first time in my life, I made good on a promise I'd given my mother when I was a child: I took her to Europe for New Year's Eve. When we were getting ready to leave for the airport, I took a long look at my mother's suitcase. I was the sherpa who'd be lugging her bag from Zurich to Vienna to Munich and back to Chicago, and I had a stake in just how heavy it was. The bag she'd packed was a little bigger than, oh, the state of Vermont, though it weighed more. I opened it up to see what was in there, and what did I find among the ten pairs of shoes, the rolls of toilet paper, and the case of Tic Tacs? Chocolate. My mother was taking a two-pound bag of crappy American chocolate on a trip to Switzerland. I pulled the chocolate out and begged my mother to leave it behind, assuring her that, yes, we could get all the chocolate we might need on our trip to Switzerland in Switzerland.

  “But we might need some on the plane or at night in the hotel,” Mom insisted, shoving the bag of M&Ms back into her bag. “And it's not that heavy.”

  Okay. Why three pairs of boots? Why toilet paper? Why Tic Tacs?

  “My feet hurt if I don't wear different shoes every day, and we're going to be doing a lot of walking. Phyllis from work went to Europe once and there wasn't any toilet paper in her hotel room. And I like Tic Tacs.”

  I was willing to concede (and carry) everything else, but I insisted she leave the chocolate behind. My mother responded that she needed everything she'd packed, and that if the chocolate wasn't coming, she wasn't coming. She was a grown woman, and who was I to tell her what she couldn't bring on this trip?

  We fought long and loud, as is our family custom, before I finally gave up. And I carried that two-pound bag of Peanut M&Ms from Chicago to Zurich to Vienna to Munich and back to Chicago. We never opened it, never touched the stuff, and what chocolate we ate on our trip was purchased en route. When I pointed this out to my mother once we'd arrived safely back in Chicago, she said she “felt better” knowing she had chocolate in her bag, “just in case.”

  Just in case of what?

  “Just in case we wanted chocolate.”

  My mother being the kind of woman who carries chocolate to Switzerland “just in case,” we had a good idea what to expect once we told her we'd been picked: baby stuff, tons of it, in the mail, every day, and three or four of everything “just in case.” I imagined a typical conversation:

  “Mom, why did you send us three car seats?”

  “A woman from work, her daughter had an ultrasound, and the doctor said she was having one baby, just one. She goes into the hospital and comes home with three. Triplets, Danny! If Melissa has just one baby, you can return the other two car seats, but I thought, you know, just in case.”

  “But we already bought a car seat, Mom.”

  “Well, then pick the one you like the best and get rid of the other three. I won't be hurt if you don't use any of the car seats I sent.”

  Also, we were making a conscious effort not to fill our house with baby stuff for fear of, well, of our apartment filling up with baby stuff. If anything went wrong, we didn't want to wind up sitting in a house full of baby stuff with no baby. Since the call came, we'd allowed ourselves to buy exactly one thing for the baby: that flannel shirt from Baby Gap. That was it. Three weeks to go, and we had no crib, no diapers, no bottles, no car seats, no bibs, no rattles, no onesies—no nothing. In case this adoption fell through—BBD/BCM—we weren't going to be tormented by empty car seats and unused diapers. We weren't going make the same mistake that other gay couple made—no, we were going to make new mistakes.

  To keep the news from my mother, we had to keep it from Terry's mother too. Our mothers had joined the information age. They were e-mailing each other daily, and anything we told Claudia would be shared with Judy in five minutes flat. On the other hand, while we feared an overexcited shop-happy grandma reaction from my mother, we dreaded the opposite from Terry's mom.

  Not that Claudia had a problem with Terry being a homo; she didn't. She had a picture of us hanging on a wall in her living room. But the Christmas letter that covered every aspect of her straight son's life while neglecting to mention that her gay son was, for all intents and purposes, pregnant had given us some indication of his mother's feelings. Terry dreaded telling her about Melissa—and her first grandchild!—because he expected an underwhelmed response. Terry's mother wasn't the most expressive person to begin with, and it was sometimes hard to tell when she was excited or pleased. We might not be able to tell the difference between her usual unflappable demeanor and disapproval, and we might overscrutinize her reaction to the news and misread it. Maybe she thought what we were doing was great. Or maybe she didn't mind having a gay son but gay adoption crossed the line for her. We were about to find out.

  My stepfather, Jerry, answered the phone when I called to lay the news on them. We spoke for a few minutes, discussing the things men and their stepfathers discuss, and said good-bye when my mother clicked on the line. I let her have it:

  “Mom, we got picked. Her name is Melissa, the baby is due March twenty-second, and it looks like it's going to happen.”

  “Oh, my God! That's wonderful! When did you get the call?”

  I was afraid she'd ask me that. Telling my mom that she was among the last to hear the news was something I dreaded. My mom and I are close, and she likes to be the first to know when anything important happens in my life.

  “Three weeks ago.”

  “Ahhhhhhh! Jerry! They got the call three weeks ago! What day? What day?”

  “On a Saturday.”

  “I KNEW IT!”

  I could hear my mother jumping up and down.

  On the day the call came, she and Jerry were eating at the Chinese restaurant they went to on their first date: “We've been eating in Chinese restaurants for ten years, Danny, and this has never happened before. We never got the same fortune in our cookies before, not once. And what was our for
tune three weeks ago? ‘Good news will come by phone.’ In both our cookies! I looked at Jerry and said, ‘Dan and Terry got picked.’ I knew it! Aha! I KNEW IT!”

  Mom saved the fortunes, “for the baby book,” and would bring them out when she came to see the baby. We talked about Melissa for a long time, and just when I thought I was in the clear my mother asked why on earth we'd waited three weeks to tell her.

  “Because babies are born dead, and birth mothers change their minds.”

  “Danny!”

  “This could still fall through, Mom. They call it a disruption. And we didn't want to do anything that might jinx things, like blabbing about the baby or Melissa to our friends and family. Acting like the baby is ours before he really is would jinx things.”

  I told her about the other gay couple and their house full of baby stuff, and told her we weren't buying anything.

  “And we don't want you sending crates of stuff either,” I explained. “Are you listening to me? No shopping. Don't buy things for a baby that isn't really ours yet, okay?”

  There was a short, stunned silence. And then, the deluge.

  We had to shop! We had to prepare! With a tone in her voice I'd never heard her use before, she warned me that if we didn't start shopping we would be bad parents. There was another person in the picture—her second grandson—and he had to be provided for. There was a life at stake.

  “There's going to be this little person in your life who's dependent on you guys for everything,” Mom said, “and when you get him home and he needs a blanket or he has a fever and you need a thermometer, you can't say, ‘Sorry, little person, we'd have everything we need to take care of you in our house but we didn't want to jinx things!’ You're going to be parents in a few weeks! You have to get ready!”

  Mom had a point.

  She wanted to start shopping that afternoon, but she didn't want to feel guilty about it. She wanted my blessing, but I wasn't budging. I explained again about the other gay couple: they had showers, they sent out announcements, their house was full of baby stuff, and then . . . no baby.